A review by leezavh
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This book starts out really strong with the first generation of characters who migrate from Korea to Japan and fight to establish their lives in a foreign country where they are seen as second-class. The amount of time you spend with Sunja, from her girlhood to her old age, makes her the most compelling character of the book and makes her pain and joy the emotional focal point. However, as the focus shifts from Sunja's generation to that of her children and grandchildren, the story loses potency. The constant time jumps interrupt the narrative just as I finally make an attachment to a set of characters. This made it so the last 300 pages of the book were just not compelling to me. I didn't care about what was happening anymore. However, the beginning was so good that it made reading the book worth it. I think this is always an issue I have with books that try to tell multi-generational stories. It feels like they can only skim the surface of the story because there is so much ground to cover and only so many pages. Intimacy is sacrificed for scale.